Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Harsh Light! by Ray Barlow

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ray@raymondbarlow.com

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Last week we had one of the summer time bright "sunny 16" days here in southern Ontario, and I usually just find other things to do, as the harsh light really doesn't do much for me. On this day, I felt some shooting energy, so my friend Malcolm Benn and I headed to a local swamp.On a hot sunny day, the birds usually hide in the shade and sleep., but this very confident Great Blue Heron came over for a visit just as we were about to leave. I missed all the flight shot, but we did have some fun trying to get some perched shots after it had landed.

I shoot aperture priority, and watch the histogram, and the highlight "blinkes" on the monitor. Most of my shots during this shoot were taken with -1 to -1 1/3 under exposure. Looking at them in the sun, on the camera monitor, I figured they were all junk, but after having a look at these images at home and using ACR for the Raw conversion, I think I was able to salvage a few respectable images.

The dynamic range on the D300 seems to save these shots... with bright highlights, and dark backgrounds, the camera is able to find a nice tonal balance and produce nice images.